Lucile+Bersworth


 * SUMMARY: On May 16, 1916, 25-year-old Lucile Bersworth died after an abortion perpetrated in the Chicago office of Dr. Anna Albers.**

On May 16, 1916, 25-year-old Lucile Bersworth died in Chicago's German-American hospital after telling authorities that Dr. Anna Albers (pictured) had perpetrated an abortion on her.

She also mentioned a man named Fred Krause, so he might have been her baby's father.

Though Albers was held by the coroner and indicted by a Grand Jury, the case never went to trial. She was rather a respectable physician, at least as of 1912, so she seems an unlikely abortionist.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good.

In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America.

For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see [|Abortion Deaths 1910-1919].



 For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

Sources:
 * Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database
 * Chicago //Day Book//, May 16, 1916

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